There will be no tales of underwater tea parties or bloody Irish myths gracing Ojai audiences this spring.

After 16 years of spinning yarns, the much-loved Ojai Storytelling Festival is taking a break. The four-day festival, which typically occurs in May, will resume next year, organizer Brian Bemel said.

Bemel, who spoke to the Ventura County Star from San Sebastian, Spain, said he wanted to take time off from organizing the festival so he could study Spanish abroad. The festival's board agreed it would be best to postpone the event until next year instead of trying to put it on without him, he said.

'I've done it for 16 years,' he said. 'I love the festival, but I think sometimes it's great to have a pause and just take stock of how things are going.'

Bemel, 66, said Spain has been keeping him busy.

'It's been a whole new adventure being here,' he said. 'I didn't stop doing (the festival) because I didn't like it. I just wanted to pursue something different.'

More than 4,000 people attend the festival in Ojai each year, Bemel said, with about half coming from outside Ventura County. Events take place mainly in the city's downtown Libbey Bowl and Ojai Art Center. They include stories for families, children and adults-only, and there are also film showings, musical performances, 'meet the tellers' events and storytelling workshops.

'There's just something magical about listening to a story. I think it takes us all back to another time and another place,' the organizer said. 'It takes us back to the time of sitting around a campfire and listening to a story. There's just something so basic about that, and in our times of all the high-tech, I think it's really refreshing just to have a simple story touch the heart and the mind.'

One day of the festival is reserved for area school children, and about 2,000 students from grades pre-kindergarten through high school attend, Bemel said.

Participating schools have included Topa Topa Elementary School, where Ojai resident Pat Essick was a teacher until she retired about three years ago. Essick said she loved taking her students to the festival each year because it gave them an opportunity to hear new language and learn about writing and story composition. Many of the stories are funny or touching, and they encourage students to empathize with different types of people, she added.

Essick has also attended the event with her own family since it began 16 years ago. She said it's her favorite Ojai festival and she'll miss being able to go this year.

'It's a great tradition, storytelling,' she said. 'It brings people together. It shares common experience in a really positive way.'

Veronica Cole, director of public relations and marketing for the Ojai Visitors Bureau, called the festival a 'tribute to the creativity and the arts' in Ojai. However, she didn't think the festival's absence this year would have much impact on tourism, which she said has been growing exponentially over the past few years.

'I don't think the impact will be substantial,' she said. 'Ojai's very festival-rich; we have a lot of festivals each year. It is a very busy time. We have the (Ojai) Tennis Tournament coming this week and then Art in the Park around the same time that the storytelling would have been, so the weekends are generally saturated anyway.'

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